March 2021: Transitioning: Movement To Finding Your Search w/ Oganga Mangiti
The workshop involves digging deep into our creative side, by exploring prose, to better understand what searching/our search is, and how it’s directly intertwined to growth, by exploring the concepts of understanding our individual/creative voice; movement and growth.
The workshop will delve deep into understanding any trauma or fears that we might have from our past, that often hinder our own personal growth. Through understanding those emotions, we will be better placed to move into and understand our creative/individual voices and thus start exploring our search further.
Lastly, the workshop will cover the deconstruction of the ego, the further understanding of what self-love means to us, and how we can make it more selfless.
This workshop is meant to help spark and better understand what our individual search is and how to explore it further, as well as finding growth through appreciating the process.
The goals of this workshop are to:
- Dig deep into your creative side.
- Understand why a “search” is important and why you need it.
- Understand the cycles of being at peace with your search.
- Explore concepts of growth and what they mean to you.
- Be able to explore prose and it’s intricacies.
- Explore our own traumas and fears.
- Establish a voice we can claim as our own.
- Deconstruct the ego.
- Better understand what self-love means to us as individuals and as a collective.
Materials: Pen, paper, and any art materials you'd like to work with.
Bio:
Oganga Mangiti, is a poet, born, raised and currently living in Nairobi, Kenya. He is also a creative with an interest in architecture, with a degree in Architectural Studies, from the University of Nairobi. He has been writing poetry from as early as 2010, and actively writing since 2018, with his debut poetry anthology, “Love and Pain,” coming out in late 2019. The book contains poems which focus on the emotions of love and those of pain, with the belief that going through each emotion individually, leads to the process of healing and growth through acceptance.
His work has been described as poetry of emotion, as it mainly focuses on the emotions of love, pain and heartbreak. He initially started writing, to express the emotions he felt; marking the important moments in his life, as well as appreciating those close to him; but that has morphed into a constant search, of using words to express different emotions and social issues, from a singular perspective. He draws a lot of his influence from African writers, such as Chinua Achebe, Francis Imbuga, Margaret Ogolla and Ijeoma Umbinyo; and poets such as R.H Sin and Rumi.
One of his poems, “Dark Passions,” has been featured in Africa Leadership Magazine blog, and he has done interviews with artist based, creative platforms, such as “Wazo Moja,” and “Book Duka,” just to name a few. In addition, he has worked with various NGOs, such as Blossom and Hope, to help bring awareness to the plight of girls in accessing sanitary towels, as well written pieces for various donation drives in Nairobi.
In 2020, he became a Bakanal De Afrique Fellow, which involved the exploration of the impact of transportation on urban cultures and communities, and how they intersect with class and citizenship, over a six-month period, culminating in January of 2021, together with 50 other artists and creatives, drawn from all over the globe. He has also participated in the international poetry competition, Poetry Battle 15, which involved coming up with pieces on themes such as “What it meant to be black?” Jazz music, Religion and Masculinity.
Currently, Oganga Mangiti, is working on his second book, which will focus on the themes of blooming and coming of age. He is also constantly engaged in growing his art form, as well as experimenting on various forms of expression. Furthermore, he has been engaged in various campaigns, using poetry and prose in various digital and marketing campaigns.
Logistics:
- This workshop runs from March 1, 2021 - March 31, 2021.
- Workshops consist of one video per week for each week in the month. Videos are 45-60 minutes long, and are shared on a private YouTube account.
- Class discussions are held via Slack.
- All readings, creative prompts, and shared artwork will be exchanged via a private Google Drive folder.
- All workshops are designed for you. Dedicate as much or as little time to the workshop per week as you'd like.
- This workshop is taught in English, but collective.aporia offers subtitles for the workshop videos in over 60 languages. If you have questions about language accommodations, please feel free to email us at [email protected].
Donations:
Collective.aporia believes in paying working artists fairly for their time and work. As a diverse international collective, we also believe strongly in valuing fair exchange—whether that be monetary, energetic, or otherwise.
Because of these beliefs, our workshop donations all begin at a $40 base rate with the option to give additional donation amounts, if you’re able. Seventy percent of the donations go to facilitator, and the remainder goes back into collective.aporia for operational expenses.
Participants also have the option to donate money towards the community scholarship, which provides opportunities to folks from these communities to attend workshops at no cost.
Please check out this page to learn more and/or apply for the scholarship.
We understand that not everyone has the financial means to donate $40. In the spirit of collaboration and exchange, we have developed a work exchange initiative that allows folks to choose what kind of work they would like to trade for free entry into the workshop. Examples of this work include writing blog posts, creating and sharing social media content, editing video subtitles, etc.
Thank you for your generosity!
[Image credit: Oganga Mangiti]
